The Intelligence Report is the SPLC's award-winning magazine.
Subscribe here for a print copy.

Hard-Line Gay-Basher Seeks a Kinder Look

2009

Summer Issue

May 29, 2009

Scott Lively has said some pretty ugly things. But now he says he wants to show the world a kinder, gentler side.

As the U.S. envoy for the international anti-gay hate group Watchmen on the Walls and co-author of The Pink Swastika, a history that falsely asserts gays masterminded the Holocaust, Scott Lively has said some pretty ugly things. But now he says he wants to show the world a kinder, gentler side.

In early February, The North Country Times, a California weekly newspaper, reported that Lively "fervently wants to get off the Southern Poverty Law Center's [hate group] list," because the "characterization of him as a 'hater' is especially troubling given his profession as a pastor: a Christian shepherd, a man of God." (The SPLC lists Lively's Abiding Truth Ministries, in Temecula, Calif., as a hate group.)

"The last thing you want to be called as a Christian is a hater," Lively said.

Surely this couldn't be the same Lively who, just two weeks earlier, had worked himself up into a homophobic lather in a Christian Newswire media advisory warning of "a mass exodus of normal men from a homosexualized military" if the "don't ask, don't tell" policy is repealed.

"There would be severe morale problems for normal men forced to live as the objects of sexual interest of other men with whom they share close quarters," Lively wrote. "However, the much bigger, longer-term problem is the threat of a homosexual takeover of the military branches."

He continued: "Most people don't realize that male homosexuality does not always lean to the effeminate. Historically, male homosexuality was much more often associated with hyper-masculine warrior cults which were usually very brutal and very politically aggressive. … Masculine-oriented male homosexuality tends also to be pederastic in nature. This bodes ill for the young men who will be our future draftees."

Lively's Pink Swastika, written with one Kevin Abrams, is characterized by such section headings as "The Homosexual Roots of the Nazi Party," "The Homosexual Roots of Fascism," and "The Fascist Roots of American 'Gay Rights'." The book was endorsed by such luminaries as R.J. Rushdoony, the late founder of a theology that calls for the stoning to death of adulteresses, gays and "incorrigible children," among many others. Another ringing endorsement came from the late Paul deParrie, who publicly advocated the murder of abortion providers. And a third was from pastor Ralph Ovadal, who calls the pope the "antichrist."